#BookReview “Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath” by Barbara Alice Mann (Seneca) in NAIS Vol.5.1 2018, University of Minnesota

Check out many other authors & director Red Haircrow’s review of “Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath: The Twinned Cosmos of #Indigenous America” by Barbara Alice Mann (Seneca) in NAIS: Native American and Indigenous Studies’s latest journal, Vol.5.1 2018, at the University of Minnesota. Copies available here https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/journals/nais

An excerpt: “Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath” is a collection of different and sometimes distinct indigenous perceptions, stories, legends and, while some people might call them myths, as in fiction, these are histories and explanations orally passed down that are believed true or are rooted in truth. As the aphorism states, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Yet this book is more than a systematic gathering of related information primarily on serpents and thunderbirds or sky and earth beings, none unique or forbidden because it is all available if you know where to look, and far more than a work detailing then condemning European proclivities, past or present. It is correction by example, of misattribution, mislabeling, and at times a “blow-by-blow” timeline of western interference and biased disdain for actual native wisdom and realities, while conversely other Europeans appropriated and erased.”